Oil Rig Evacuations Continue Ahead Of Hurricane Delta

Oil and gas companies are evacuating more platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico as Hurricane Delta barrels toward the coast, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

The BSEE reported on Wednesday that it has activated its Hurricane Response Team that monitors offshore oil and gas operations on platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico as Delta approaches.

So far, according to the BSEE, oil and gas companies have evacuated staff from 180 production platforms, which is nearly a third of all manned platforms in the Gulf.

Personnel have been evacuated from three (30%) non-dynamically positioned rigs, and 12 dynamically positioned rigs (75%).

According to the BSEE, approximately 80.42% of the current oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut-in ahead of the latest hurricane. Approximately 50% of all gas production has been shut-in.

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Several storms this season have shut-in production in the Gulf, starting with Cristobal in June and most recently ending with Sally. The hurricane that shut in the most oil and gas production in the Gulf, however, was Laura, which made landfall in late August.

At its peak, Laura forced the evacuation of all 16 dynamically positioned drilling rigs, 11 of the 12 positioned drilling rigs moored to the seafloor, and nearly half of the 643 offshore production platforms operating in the Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico. The peak shut-in of crude oil production occurred on August 25, two days before Laura’s landfall, when 84 percent of the region’s average daily crude oil production in 2019 was shut-in, the EIA said earlier this month.

So far, the shut-ins and evacuations have cost oil field operators in the Gulf of Mexico some $9 billion, according to Reuters.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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